OPINION Studios and Networks Need to Stop Erasing Their History
The recent SpongeBob mishap is but the latest in a questionable series of acts of audiovisual erasure.
As revealed a few days ago, an episode from the third season of SpongeBob SquarePants, first broadcast in 2003, is currently out of rotation in the United States and has been so since 2018, due to what Nickelodeon and ViacomCBS have termed “story elements [that] were not kid-appropriate” (this presumably refers to the panty raid, although it has never been officially confirmed). Another more recent episode was pulled altogether in the US, despite having already aired in some international territories, due to its coincidental similarities with the current health crisis.
This is not the only example of shows having some of their content altered or removed in recent years: last summer, entire episodes of 30 Rock and Scrubs were purged from streaming services due to blackface gags, and an installment of Fawlty Towers was temporarily unavailable on various platforms in the UK because of a scene where a bigoted character uses racist language.
HBO Max, which holds the exclusive US streaming rights to South Park, omits all episodes featuring jokes at the expense of Muhammad (this adds a meta layer to the Cartoon Wars two-parter, where the prophet is mentioned but never shown, with the offending scene pre-emptively obscured by Comedy Central censors).
The producers of The Simpsons decided, in the wake of the Leaving Neverland documentary, to pull the season 3 premiere from circulation, due to Michael Jackson being a guest voice in the episode (even though he doesn’t play himself, is credited under a pseudonym and hired a soundalike for the scene where he sings).
All of this has happened roughly at the same time as other films and programs being preceded by disclaimers, which some have decried as political correctness gone berserk: on Disney+, some animated classics are preceded by a brief text explaining they contain offensive depictions of certain cultures, while HBO Max has a video contextualizing Gone With the Wind.
This is, of course, nothing new: Disney has had similar texts or videos on the home releases of certain shorts, much like Warner Bros’ box sets featuring the Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry. And similar contextual analysis is pretty much a mainstay in newer editions of works of literature with problematic elements, be it the racist undertones of H.P. Lovecraft or the age-long debate on whether Shakespeare’s Shylock is an antisemitic caricature.
And yet, presumably because the Internet wasn’t around back then and a lot of people can’t be bothered to do actual research, assumptions are made about these measures being an overreaction to contemporary sensibilities. This is far from true: most of the films under such scrutiny were controversial at the time of release. Take Gone With the Wind, for example: producer David O. Selznick received hate mail before the cameras even started rolling, due to the novel’s depiction of slavery and the antebellum South in general.
Similarly, the scenes in Disney’s Peter Pan featuring the Native Americans were widely criticized to the extent that the characters were completely excluded from the 2002 sequel, and Walt Disney himself reportedly vetoed the casting of Louis Armstrong as King Louie in The Jungle Book because he knew having an African American performer as the voice of an ape would generate negative headlines (the role was given to Louis Prima, who was of Italian descent).
Of course, Disney is also guilty of one of the most notorious acts of deletion: Song of the South, originally released in 1946 and rarely seen in the last three decades or so. The film, which was derided back in the day for its racially insensitive content, has never been available on home video in the United States, and international releases are currently out of print. Additionally, Bob Iger has repeatedly stated there are no plans to put it on Disney+, even with a disclaimer.
Questions of quality aside (the movie is, frankly, not very good, its reputation having been blown out of proportion because of the ban), the company’s decision in this case is not entirely unjustified, and even Roger Ebert, an ardent anti-censorship advocate, believed children should not be able to access the film (adults are a different matter). It is, however, a bit paradoxical in an age where other films from the same company are available, uncut, with a brief explanatory note at the beginning
It also has a more disturbing implication, in the same vein as the acts of deletion carried out by Nickelodeon, NBC and other companies: instead of acknowledging past mistakes, they’re sweeping them under the rug, as though nothing ever happened. And how are we supposed to learn and better ourselves, if all we get is the sanitized version of pop culture history? Give me a hundred disclaimers, as long as the work itself remains available.